Train the Trainer Webinar

JULIA ROTONDO: I've started recording. Rick and Margie, I think you guys are our leads for today. So welcome to today's training on FEMP—Train-the-Trainer. We are very lucky to be joined by Rick Redden and Margie Splattstoesser from the Pacific Northwest National Lab. And Rick and Margie, take it away.

RICK REDDEN: All right, thank you, Julia. I hope you can hear me OK.

JULIA ROTONDO: I can hear you.

RICK REDDEN: Appreciate the introduction, Julia. If you'd like to, please turn your camera on if you'd like to. I know you were talking about some backgrounds that some of you do or don't have. But we'd like to have some visual interaction with you today. And so we can march forward here on this Train-the-Trainer session. So thank you for being with us this morning or this afternoon, wherever it is you may be here in the US. Margie and I are out here in the Pacific Northwest in Richland, Washington, in one of our studios here at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, as Julia alluded to.

So Margie and I work here at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in our training development area. And we work with a multitude of national security partners to build training and training development both domestically and internationally. My training background is I've been at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory about 10 years. Prior to that, it was the US Federal Training Center.

And then I taught internationally, living in Asia. And I've been in training development for about 3 and 1/2 decades. But I also do training currently for the Department of Energy's National Training Center and the IAEA in Vienna, Austria. And I'm happy to be here today.

But I'd like you all to know that I'm a lifelong learner. And I'm sure I can learn something from you. And hopefully, you'll get something out of the presentation that Margie and I present here. But when it comes to training, I believe in the fundamental notion that a good idea doesn't care who has it.

So we develop training here at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. And Margie and I and others collaborate to make sure that training product that we eventually develop and is eventually implemented is one of high quality. So I'm going to stop and turn over to my colleague Margie and let her introduce herself.

MARGIE SPLATTSTOESSER: Hi. I'm Margie Splattstoesser. I am an event manager at PNNL. I've been here for about 10 years. And I lead the National Security Directorate's Programmatic Events Office. My role here is to assist instructors with creating successful and stress-free training sessions. So I take care of all the logistical details, all the behind-the-scenes work.

And then that way, you can trust that everything's going to run smoothly. And that allows you to focus on delivering the content, which I am not technical. So most of the time, I don't know what the instructors are talking about. But somehow we work together as an amazing team. So that's a little bit about me. Rick?

RICK REDDEN: OK, great. As Margie alluded to, she works with a multitude of our instructors here. And we do instructor development here in our training, our training delivery and development program. But we work from development through engagement with our event coordinators, or I like to call Margie our producers. But we work on the foundations of learning all the way to the eventual delivery.

So in our trainings, we always, before we get going, set expectations, so what we expect from you and, obviously, what you can expect from us, the facilitators. So just be present and attentive. As I mentioned, if you want to turn on your camera, we will be doing some interactive activities and using a few tools here with a couple small videos. But we'd like you to participate in any way you can visually.

As I mentioned, if you want to turn your camera on or if you want to participate and have a question, please ask that. Our colleague Julia will be doing a great job monitoring the chat. But at any time, please feel free to interrupt us, and we'll try to give you an answer in the moment. If not, we'll save time at the end where we can answer hopefully all your questions or maybe schedule some time afterwards where we can show you some of the things we do or examples or tools we're going to show you here this morning.

We're open to new ideas, empathetic to information. And I hope you focus in on what we're doing here because I think we have some things to share that might be able to help you or give you a consideration for a thought or idea that you may want to implement in your eventual training delivery.

The other thing is we're going to give full devotion to the content we're sharing with you, meaning all the ideas and examples we do with our training programs here and how we help develop our instructor skill set. We are going to help with growth for you if need be, as I mentioned, after this training. But please, we're going to ask you for feedback anytime during the training. Or certainly, at the end, Margie will be using a tool.

When we set expectations in a lot of our trainings—and Margie and I have been blessed to do this both domestically and internationally—we set some examples. For example, we do a lot of work in some close to sensitive areas. But one of the examples I use is the old locker room tap.

Before you enter the field at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin, for the Green Bay Packers, they have a little sign up there every player taps before they go on the field, exiting the locker room. And that example in terms of expectation is what you see here, what you say here, what you hear here stays here when you leave here. So I do that a lot of times in our international settings and certainly some of our domestic settings when we are setting expectations for the training. So I just thought I'd give you one example there.

A lot of time, I ask our training staff to use three types of sets. Number one and up front is set expectations for the course, the actual training delivery you're going to provide, regardless of the content, the subject matter, or maybe the specifics on maybe a certain type of device or equipment or whatever it may be. And second is set standards, whatever that may be throughout the course of your presentation, especially if it involves a skill set or them performing a task. Or maybe it's performance based, and they need to accomplish something on a checklist.

And then lastly, for all of us, as trainers and facilitators, set examples. Set an example by being good at what you do, being in the moment, being present, being responsive, and being fully aware to all your participants' and trainings needs. So set expectations. Set standards. Set examples, really important to us.

Right now, we, Margie and I, would like to learn a little bit more about you utilizing a tool Margie use quite often. And it's an online polling tool we use. And I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Margie.

MARGIE SPLATTSTOESSER: So there's a couple different ways to log in here. You can use the link that I dropped in chat. If you click on that link, you won't have to do anything else. You should be in. And I'll ask you to hit the thumbs up. Otherwise, you can scan the QR code.

And then the last way is going to menti.com and inputting the code at the top. So just hit that thumbs up. You can see in the bottom right-hand corner, we use that to see how many people we have logged in.

And one thing about Mentimeter is I've never gotten 100%. So if you have 20 people in the room, you're not probably going to get 20. It's totally anonymous. We always say that, hoping that everyone will log in. But you want to find your magic number. And then once you get that, you're looking for that on each question to see if they all vote on each question. Sometimes they do skip one or two. So how many people, Julia, do we have in this meeting right now?

JULIA ROTONDO: We have 53 attendees. And it looks like we're around 35 people who've accessed the Menti.

MARGIE SPLATTSTOESSER: OK, so we'll give it just a couple more seconds, see if we can get a few more. I will say in a classroom, if you're using cell phones, I try to get people to log in to the Wi-Fi when they walk in just so they're prepared. And it does take a minute or two. So we're at 36. Rick, are you ready to move forward?

RICK REDDEN: Yes, definitely.

MARGIE SPLATTSTOESSER: OK.

RICK REDDEN: All right, so the first question. Have you ever delivered what we call ILT, which is Instructor-Led Training? OK, you can see down in the bottom-right corner on the screen that Margie has for you that 39 people have responded, which means roughly 75% or 3/4 of you have delivered instructor-led training, which is great. So you'll have a great background probably or most definitely on all the information we're going to cover today.

Those of you that haven't delivered in person or what we call ILT, Instructor-Led Training, hopefully, you'll get some ideas or suggestions out of all the content we're going to cover here in the near 90 minutes that we are together here today. Yeah, OK, second question for you. Have you delivered what we call vILT? And let's include the hybrid environment in this, so in a virtual setting, like we're doing today with you.

And you can see we're right at about 40 people. 41, great. OK, so we've got about, again, right around 75% or 3/4 of you that have delivered virtual training, which is great. That's good to know. So, Margie, let's go on to our next question for our audience. Please select one of the following career tracks. If you aren't in one of the six listed there, please select Other.

MARGIE SPLATTSTOESSER: I find this fascinating to watch.

RICK REDDEN: All right, so we do have a few others here. We do have three analysts of some sort, policy and data. But most of you or the majority of you, either engineers or program leads, which is fine great. Fourth and last question here for you. Thank you, Margie. Which engagement tools have you used before, if any? There's five listed there. One, Mentimeter, which we're using now, a few others. And we'll describe and show many others later.

MARGIE SPLATTSTOESSER: I'm always looking at other types of engagement tools. So I'd love to see what they are if you don't mind putting them in the chat.

RICK REDDEN: And again, our colleague Julia is doing a great job monitoring the chat and helping us as we go through all the content here this morning. But it looks like around 30 of you have either used Mentimeter or SurveyMonkey in our 39 participants. So again, roughly 3/4 of you have used Mentimeter or SurveyMonkey.

And we'll be demonstrating a few of these and also talking about the other ones on the screen. And as my colleague Margie mentioned, if you're using some other type of tool, please put it in the chat. And we can talk about that later as we get into our section on tools.

So this was our last question using Mentimeter, one of the engagement mechanisms we'll be using today with you. This is the first of what I guarantee will be more than a half a dozen. So as we get through the near 90 minutes that we are together today, be looking for Mentimeter activities or even a short video clip for a different type of engagement tool. So thank you for participating in this first Mentimeter, our first engagement activity. And we're going to move on into our presentations now.

MARGIE SPLATTSTOESSER: And I wanted to just let you know that I left blank slides in here. So you can stay logged into Mentimeter. Don't close that window. And that way, we save time on logging in each time. So I'll bring it back to the PowerPoint. Rick?

RICK REDDEN: OK, great. Thank you, Margie. And we're moving forward here. So when we develop training, writing it, implementing it, we always have goals and objectives, whether we're doing a performance activity or a true learning session. But our goal today is to apply best practices in a learning environment.

So whatever that environment might be, it might be a training setting, a classroom, an exercise facility, whatever that may be—and throughout this, we're looking at engagement, communication skills, and planning and organizing, and actual delivery that you and I, as trainers or facilitators, will actually deliver. So our goal today is to share with you some best practices, especially that Margie and I use and work with, to develop our trainers here at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory because we do deliver a lot of training both domestically and internationally in different types of environments.

Our objectives with you today are discuss the adult learner learning styles, the actual atmosphere where you're delivering training to better understand effective training engagement. We're going to look at communication and performance skills along with using questioning techniques in actual training delivery. And then lastly, our third objective that we're using today—define the importance of using various tools and management applications in terms of planning and action—actually organizing an actual training delivery.

So we're going to show you some tools and mechanisms that Margie and I use in different types of setting both in an instructor-led environment and in actual virtual environment. Some of those will apply greatly to what we're doing with you here today. And hopefully, we can share some things.

But as I mentioned earlier in our introduction, if you've got some that you've used or maybe similar to some of the ones that Margie and I are going to show you later on, please share those in the chat, or we'll leave time at the end. If you have questions or ideas or other tools or mechanisms you'd like to share with Margie, Julia, Cedar, and myself, we'd sure appreciate it.

All right, let's move forward. In our first objective, we're looking at common characteristics of adult learners. So one of the things you're probably thinking, why do we need to know this? Well, it's really important when you go into a training setting knowing what your audience is. If you reflect back just a few minutes ago, we did that polling tool with you, that Mentimeter.

So we tried to find out how many of you are program leads or engineers or policy analysts or whatever that may be. We like to find out who's coming to our training. Even when we're there, trying to find out about our audience members, meaning our training participants.

So what are their characteristics? Most often, we have a lot of understanding of our adult learners that have a large bank of previous learning. They learn best when they can leak knowledge and skills, their previously learned abilities, attributes, or even those skills. And they want to contribute to the actual learning process.

We know that they are motivated by a degree or level of which the actual training is going to help them achieve a goal. Maybe it's their goal, a promotion at their work. Maybe it's to get better at a specific skill or task, whatever that may be, but understanding our participants come to training with a vast amount of experience and certainly knowledge.

They're goal oriented. They usually know what they want to attain. They're motivated by that actual training and how it's going to help them, as I referenced, and how participating in the training is actually going to help them achieve those goals.

They're relevancy oriented. Learning has to be applicable to their needs to be of value, to help them see not just the why but the what and how that training is going to help them, maybe with a concept or a theory or an actual skill or task initiative or concept to help them complete some type of role, task, skill within their job.

They're practical and problem centered so that they must see how the training helps them, not only with work but at home, things they do in their normal life. They're not just interested in knowledge for knowledge's sake. But they want to see it be practical and help them solve some type of problem, whether it applies to their daily life, a work skill. And they learn by doing.

And lastly, we like to look at adult learners that come with a high degree and level of expertise or experience. And they expect respect. So they don't like to fail. They want to be treated as adults. They're sensitive to being corrected. They learn best in a safe and positive environment. And we're going to talk about that in terms of being mindful to the shared environment and training and having shared visibility as a facilitator or instructor.

So when we look at adult learners, we'd like to look at learning styles. So learning styles is very important because everyone learns a little bit differently, let's say. And as a trainer or facilitator, it is important for you as much as possible to find out more about your audience, just like we did in that polling device there.

So we look at that as very applicable because we know that all human beings process a lot of learning through their five senses, whether that's sight, hearing, touch, taste, or smell. Oftentimes in learning, we see that the three big ones are sight, hearing, and touch. Those senses that are taste and smell are most often touched upon in a training setting. And that is really important for us to understand in terms of the preferences, let's say, that the participants come to training with.

So they learn in many different ways. And that could be from the background that affects their daily life, from the type of car they drive to the side of the bed they sleep on, for example. So in the training environment, we like to share with our trainers that this is called a preference for learning or an actual learning style. And this actually affects how our audience members, meaning the participants in our training, actually learn.

So right now, we're going to do a little activity that's going to touch upon these learning styles. And I want to make this interactive with you. So what I'd like you to do, because I know you can hopefully see me on camera, I want you to take your arms. And I want you to cross them like I'm doing here on camera. And then I want you to take them apart.

Now, I want you to do the same skill there. And I want you to put the other arm on top of the other. So meaning if you had the left hand arm on top of your right arm, I want your right arm on top of your left arm. OK, how many of you feel comfortable with your right arm on top? How many of you feel comfortable with your left arm on top?

I see some raised hands there, so I appreciate that. Chris, thank you. Yes. So understanding that learning style, that may be a little different there with the right arm on top of the left arm. The reason I had put your left arm on top is everybody's learning style is a little bit different. I see a raised hand there. Chris, did you have a raised hand?

JULIA ROTONDO: —might have just been left over from the voting about which arm.

RICK REDDEN: OK, thank you, Julia. So most—

CHRIS TREMPER: My point was that I'm indifferent to which arm is which. So I don't know what that means.

RICK REDDEN: OK, maybe some of you are ambidextrous. But you also have a preference there, let's say. So if you put the other arm on top, it might feel different or, let's say, uncomfortable. The true point here is that an instructor or facilitator, you understand people and their preferences for learning, which we're going to talk about here in terms of learning styles.

But I'm just doing this little activity with you here. And I know this is a little tactile or kinesthetic. We're getting to that here in just a second. But I want you to do one other small task here for me, while we're together in this little setting.

I want you to take your hands. And I want you to lock your fingers together like I'm showing you on camera. And I want you to close your hands and then put one thumb on top of the other. Hopefully, you can see that on camera here. And I want you to close your hands.

OK, quite a few of you probably have your left thumb on top, right? All right, let's take your hands apart. Let's put them back together. And now I want you to put the opposite thumb on top of the other.

OK, so just like we did in activity with the arms on top of each other, you can see this activity right here that I had you interlock your fingers and put one thumb on top of the other. It might feel different or uncomfortable. So quite a few of you probably had a dominant thumb or from your dominant hand on top of the other, control or what we like to call preference.

So again, getting back to facilitator or instructor, it's really important to understand that learning style and a preference. Some of you probably have difficulty switching from positions, left thumb on top of the right thumb as opposed to right thumb on the left thumb. So that also affects how your audience members'—how your participants' learning styles affect how they process or prefer to process information, something to think about.

Little simple activity there that we did visually that I was showing you as an instructor, auditory, and tactile or kinesthetically. So I tried to touch on the three primary learning styles we focus on there just in that little simple activity that we're doing virtually, one other technique you can use in a virtual learning environment.

So let's look at visual learners, which are very important. Visual learners are important. They prefer demonstrations. They need visual stimulation like slides, videos, graphics, photos, maybe something in your training setting that will help them retain that information.

They also need visual references. So for example, if you are not providing a visual reference for a visual learner, they may say to you, I don't get it, or I don't see the big picture in this. They may want you to paint a scenario for them. So they need to think in pictures. These visual learners, they think like they dream. So for example, if they need to see something, you could provide it in pictures and not necessarily words.

So a simple question for us to consider in this environment. Where do visual learners sit in our training setting? Simply, they either sit or stand up front. They need to see what you're doing, especially if you're referencing information, showing a tool or device, or having to demonstrate something in front of your training audience, whether that's virtually or hybrid instructor-led environment, things to consider with visual learners.

Let's look at the second one, the auditory learner. They want verbal instruction. So you need to call that out for them—first, second, third or beginning, next, last, whatever those cues may be. They need some type of auditory reference to them to actually help them get through a process to perform a task, to accomplish some type of skill in the training setting, whatever that may be. So they prefer step-by-step instructions, most often.

And sometimes in learning, especially when we do performance-based training, meaning they've got to perform to a skill set or a checklist or a task or a performance chart of some sort, you'll often find the auditory learner talking to themselves while they're actually learning that skill or going through a process, for example.

Let's do another short activity here. We're going to use the visual, auditory, and what you're going to see next, the kinesthetic learner. But in this setting, using an auditory learning setting here virtually, let's do an activity. I want you to close your eyes. And I want you to hear this mnemonic.

Again, for auditory learners, I want you to think of the great lakes between the United States and Canada. And how can you remember each of the great lakes by name? So you've got your eyes closed. You're being a visual learner. You're probably thinking of all five of those great lakes and where they're located, around the state of Michigan or south of the province of Ontario, north of New York. But I want you to remember the great lakes as the mnemonic HOMES, H-O-M-E-S.

You got your eyes closed, your auditory learning. You're visualizing this. Now I'm going to incorporate the kinesthetic or tactile learner. I want you to take your finger with the mnemonic HOMES. And I want you to draw the letter H in the air somewhere out in front of you. So do that with your index finger.

As you're doing this, picture in your mind where Lake Huron is, the H in HOMES. Now I want you to draw the letter O for Lake Ontario. Visualize where Lake Ontario is. Now I want you to do it for Lake Michigan and Lake Erie and Lake Superior, H-O-M-E-S, Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior.

OK, go ahead and open your eyes. Now, you probably can think, OK, where is Lake Superior? Well, Lake Superior is between northwest Michigan and the middle part, let's say, of Canada, establishing a border between the US and Canada. But what I had to do there was had you close your eyes, visualize it, listen to me describe that mnemonic. And we incorporated the kinesthetic part of learning using your index finger, drawing the letter in the air.

So the kinesthetic learner, to us, is the feeler and the mover. They need practice sessions. They need to actually be doing something. That's why I had you, in that last activity, use your finger and draw the mnemonic of each letter at the beginning of the great lakes in the air in front of you.

So they need to touch and feel everything. I gave you a sense of that doing that in the air, touching and feeling, visualizing, and also listening, for example, to Lake Huron, the H. They need to feel comfortable.

So a lot of times with kinesthetic learners in our training environment, they need to sit where they're comfortable. Sometimes you'll find them off to the side, sitting with their feet on a chair in front of me or on a table, somewhere in front of them. They are hands-on learners. They'd rather participate than watch. They want to be your volunteer to demonstrate something, let's say.

And they use feeling references, so whatever that may be, touch, balance, stability, whatever that may be maybe in the training environment. The kinesthetic learners, you'll find if you walk around as a facilitator or trainer, they're the ones that sometimes doodle on their notepad. Or they're taking notes in a different sense, or they are drawing pictures. They need to touch their pen and be doing something.

But they really need to connect with activities emotionally and physically. Again, that's a tactile and kinesthetic learner. So we're going to do another quick activity here, and I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Margie.

MARGIE SPLATTSTOESSER: So hopefully, you're all still logged into Mentimeter. And we are just hoping to have you tell us what your primary learning style is. I know some of you may feel like you're even between all of them. But if you can pick your primary, that would be great.

RICK REDDEN: And again, in the bottom-right corner of the screen that Margie's presented to you using Mentimeter here, you can see how many people have answered from the number Julia gave you early on in terms of participation here with us today in this setting. And it looks like the majority of you obviously are visual learners or you prefer as your primary learning style. So we've got 2/3 of you that are visual learners, really important to note as an instructor or facilitator.

That means you better do a really good job of presenting information, meaning all the slides that you project back up in front of you on a screen or double screen maybe in your setting, especially at the FEMP conference you're having in Pittsburgh next month, that they are presentable, readable. If you're using props, visual aids, job aids, whatever they may be, they're clear with their graphics and photos, so those kind of things. So in our audience today, in this virtual setting, we've got a lot of visual learners. So me having my camera on, demonstrating a couple of those activities was really important. OK, great. Thank you, Margie.

So now we know the learning styles, which is very important, knowing our audience, which is part of our first objective here. Now we're looking at the training layout and atmosphere and why that is important. Knowing our learners and their learning styles but also understanding your facility or your training setting setup, very important.

JULIA ROTONDO: Rick

RICK REDDEN: Yes.

JULIA ROTONDO: So sorry to interrupt you. But before you move on to layout and atmosphere, there was a question here in the chat about the general distribution of the population among those learning styles. Do we know that? Was this group normal? Or was this group skewed in a way the general population isn't?

RICK REDDEN: Our general population, Julia, that we normally see, we have a lot of visual and kinesthetic or tactile learners because of the nature of the work that Margie and I do, for example, here at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Now, it may be different where all of you work, depending on your setting, where you're actually working from. Maybe you're at NREL or somewhere else here in the United States.

And as a part of the Federal Emergency Management Program, that might differ, your visual to your auditory kinesthetic learner. In the work we do—and it's a great question, Julia, and a great question from our participants there—we see more of the visual and kinesthetic learner. We work in a lot in the national security space. So we use, for example, radiation detection instruments or other tools or devices, different mechanisms.

So a lot of our learners have application needs, meaning they need some type of device, a piece of equipment, or instrument to perform their job. A lot of them come to our training with kinesthetic-preferred styles and also visual style. So one of the two is usually more dominant. I hope that answered your question.

OK, great. Let's keep going on here, facility and room setup considerations. And I'll have my colleague Margie chime in here at any time. But location—so where is the training setting? Really important. And that's important because of number two there.

If you're having interactive exercises, think small group breakout activities or some type of exercise within the training setting, is space a consideration? Is other needs there in terms of maybe a prop, let's say, a flip chart or something of that nature that they're going to use for an activity? So those are very important.

Equipment—equipment can mean all kinds of things, something you're showing or demonstrating or the equipment you're actually using, whether it's a laptop or two, a projection unit, a screen that drops down electronically out of the ceiling, all the way down to your remote controls or clickers, very important to check on all that. And electronic components are very important. So in our setting, especially in virtual instructor-led training, I stay out of that department and let Margie, my colleague, handle that. So, Margie, I don't know if you've got any comments on number four.

MARGIE SPLATTSTOESSER: I think it's just—depending on what you need to do, it's going to be very specific to your activities for that day. But I always recommend that you're familiar with what you're going to be using. The funny thing—not funny—the most surprising thing I see is the clicker. I always think they're universal, and they're all the same. But I have so many instructors get stuck on how it works.

And then once you get nervous, you stall out. So I always recommend that people are up there practicing, making sure everything works, having a backup plan, backup batteries, that kind of thing. So hopefully, that helps.

RICK REDDEN: Thank you, Margie. So really important to make sure you check on all that. You work together with your coinstructor. Or if you as fortunate as I have or am and I'm blessed and fortunate, I rely on our producer or event coordinator, if you will, Margie. And she's been doing this with me for a number of years. But we've interacted both domestically and virtually. So we know the layout, all the way down, as Margie mentioned, having backup batteries for your clicker.

Number five is really important, depending on the setting, whether you're inside, maybe in a big hotel ballroom or conference room or maybe a small room, like you see on the screen here in the picture we've got for you. And then safety's always important. We run a lot of exercises that are primarily based to produce some type of performance mechanism. But safety is always important because of the setting.

We run tabletop exercises, which are TTX to us. We run field training exercises, which are usually external to a building, meaning out in some type of environment, although we do do those sometimes in a warehouse or a contained space, so making sure everything is safe in order to conduct an exercise and activity with anybody that's involved in the training.

You're probably looking at the last one there on the screen that is identified by a number, and then that is the uncontrollables. So Margie and I are always planning for those. And we'll show you here soon what we do on the other objectives that we've laid out for this training. But primarily, that is having a plan B.

If equipment were to fail, making sure we have backup things in place, extra flip charts, all the way down to space considerations. Or if we have a couple participants show up late, we know that we've got two chairs just next door. Any other things that we can control and have real emphasis for backup plans, list, checklists, things that we need to perform during the actual training, especially in an instructor-led environment, very important in a virtual environment. We've got all these things set up and ready. And those are what we call our uncontrollables.

MARGIE SPLATTSTOESSER: And, Rick, Carmen mentioned in the chat that after lunch, people get really sleepy. It's another consideration, which Rick likes to crank the temperature down and freeze out the students so they're awake more. But that's definitely something to think about.

JULIA ROTONDO: Which we can't do at Energy Exchange, just flagging. We cannot change the temperature of those rooms, unfortunately.

MARGIE SPLATTSTOESSER: That is very true, very true.

RICK REDDEN: Good point, Julia. And like my colleague Margie referenced, I'm notorious in our international training settings. Especially in a warm or humid environment, after we come back from lunch, that temperature goes from 68 down to 65 because I like to have the participants sit up a little more in their chair. They might be a little colder, cooler.

But after you come back from lunch, like anybody, you got a full stomach. And your eyelids might get a little heavy. So we drop the temperature. So there's different tricks we do, and we can share all those in regards to some of the tools we'll talk about here in a little bit. But all the information we cover in the next 50 minutes on engagement tools, hopefully, you'll find some really possible things that you might be able to use.

So creating that positive environment—

JULIA ROTONDO: —from Chris. So sorry. I wasn't sure if he had a question, before you moved on.

RICK REDDEN: OK, go ahead.

JULIA ROTONDO: Chris, you are on mute.

CHRIS TREMPER: I've been invited to speak for 30 to 40 minutes at an Energy Exchange session that goes from 3:30 to 5:30. Any suggestions you can offer on that would be very helpful.

RICK REDDEN: OK, we will, and if it's OK with you, let's defer that here for a few slides. And Margie and I will show you some mechanisms that we use. Hopefully, you'll get more out of that, OK? And it might be applicable to what you're going to do, say, in a given 40-minute time frame. But great question. I appreciate it. We're going to get to it later, Chris, promise.

Creating a positive environment, why is that important? Well, we hope our participants will buy into concepts. We hope they're more willing to participate. We hope the learning environment is less stressful, and we hope learning is fun.

Certainly, by you being able to be exposed to different mechanisms or tools here or activities or other means, it's really, really important for us. And that's what we try to do in our environment. Why do we smile? To provide that warm and happy environment.

So quick question for you, and you can use the chat, as Margie alluded to. What does everyone do in the same language? We ask this question internationally, quite often. What do we all do in the same language?

Smile. We all smile. If you do that as an instructor or facilitator, it begins the trend hopefully during your training session for a friendly environment. And then you want to find ways in that friendly environment to connect with the students. So I would like to know Chris's name or Julia's name or Cedar's name, for example, just throwing out some examples there, using people by name.

And hopefully, you'll be able to connect with students just like this example here from that famous Boston bar you probably watched on TV in the '80s or '90s if you were so fortunate.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

- Afternoon, everybody.

- Norm!

- How's life treating you?

- Afternoon, everybody.

- Norm!

- Norman?

- Hey, what's happening, Norm?

- Afternoon, everybody.

- Norm!

- Hey, Mr. Peterson.

[END PLAYBACK]

RICK REDDEN: One of the greatest things I've found in training is calling out people by their name or thanking them or using them in a positive way. I was trying to use Julia early on about monitoring the chat for us or Chris and thanking him for the question but letting him know that content was coming, or I was going to answer his question later. Connect with the students. Be friendly. Use their name, really helps.

If you're in a huge audience and you don't know everybody, one of the tricks as an instructor is try to catch every fifth or sixth person's name. When you call on a person on the left side of the room—and let's say we're in a huge conference setting, like you will be in Pittsburgh, and Chris is the facilitator or presenter. If Julia is way over on the far left of the audience on Chris's side, he could reference Julia's name and then maybe five seats to the right of Julia and Cedar. You could call. Thank you, Julia. Cedar, I saw you had your hand up. Thank you, Cedar, for your question, different ways to connect with your audience.

And then letting them know what they can expect in that atmosphere and that training session. Remember, back to our very second slide there, what we expect from you, what you expect from us in this training.

So knowing all that, we want you to consider field of view when you're engaging your audience, connecting with them, smiling, and setting those expectations. In our training setting—and we're going to give you an example that Julia has provided us here in a few slides—you'll see we use a peripheral field of vision with all our trainers. And we make them work through this.

So anytime they're in front of their audience, we want them to keep both their shoulders above their hips. You can probably see me moving on screen in the camera here. What this is really saying is having direct vision, near vision, and far vision so that you could keep an eye on maybe Chris and our audience here asking that question but still see Julia way off to the left, for example. So you have what's called a midperipheral and a far, a near and a far vision, very important in the training setting, which I'm going to show you here in just a second for consideration.

Going back to my shoulders above the hips, we tell our instructors, never let your shoulders get perpendicular to your hips. When you do that, you close out your audience. And you never want them to see the back of your head, which I'll show you an example here, too, on a actual slide in terms of movement, depending on the instructor's field of view in that training setting.

So very important that you maintain visibility, what we like to call the nonverbal action as you as the facilitator or instructor. Having shared attention to help with your participants' retention of the materials, even if they're focusing on you, or picture yourself demonstrating something or referencing some type of visual aid, job aid, document, whatever that may be, it'll help their participation. They'll want to sit up more and visually see you engage with that.

And then as you can see, you convey experiences with affiliation, a positive attitude and warmth towards those participants. Remember, smile, connectivity, expectations, those kind of things are very, very important.

Now, depending on the type of setting, knowing our direct near and far vision and maintaining visibility, think of the type of training setting that you could be delivering training. Some of these may be ideal. Some may not.

So for example, the second one from the left and the second one from the right, meaning the two in the middle, those are a little bit tougher training environments. And you may want them because of the type of training and interaction that you want out of that training outcome, whether it's activity or exercise based. What does that look like?

Obviously, the second one from the left, if you're up front and you've got direct vision, you're going to have two, three participants at each table, for example, with their back of their head to you, not good when you're obviously demonstrating something, showing a projection up on a screen, using an aid up front of the training environment. And I know you can see all the other settings.

Think about visibility as you move in front of that training setting, using the previous one on the far left, typical standard training environment or classroom setting. Remember, your movement, as you can see on the screen here, allows for shared visibility. Picture near and far here with your peripheral but being able to see in your direct vision who might be your audience member, for example, asking a question.

And as I mentioned, never let them see the back of your head. One of the big things we do with our instructors, especially when they're delivering training, even if they're writing information up on a whiteboard or a flip chart, don't be talking to the flip chart, the pin or turning the back of your head to your audience. That is a distraction to them.

And I want you to think in terms of big picture. You may have an audience member or a participant in your training that might be difficult of hearing, let's say. And maybe they're a very good lip reader, if you will. So anytime you're looking at them, even in your direct or near peripheral, they'll be able to see you.

Now, Julia has provided me an example of the setting you may be delivering training in. So now some of the things in engagement we want you to think about is the actual microphone. And what type of microphone will you be using? Are you up on a stage in a training environment, much like we've captured here? And do you know where you're direct, near, and far peripheral vision, for example, is when you've turned behind that podium or on the stage still trying to engage all of your audience? What does that look like?

Do you have good spatial awareness or that setting, meaning on that platform, on that stage, behind the podium? Have you moved from the podium? Are there any tripping hazards? Does the stage have railings, especially where the stairs are at, for safety? Do you venture off the stage or not? Where are all your sightlines if you leave from behind the podium? Things to consider in your special far peripheral vision.

And then do you have someone like I'm blessed to have, a producer, event coordinator like Margie that can help me, for example, talking into my earpiece using a cue card? Maybe let me know, hey, you got five more minutes in this event or activity or exercise. And then is she adjusting the volume, for example, on my microphone? Now, looking back up to the top one, the top bullet very quickly, I'm going to turn it over to Margie here for some additional considerations.

MARGIE SPLATTSTOESSER: So when I am running an event, I do try to give—not instructors—but presenters the opportunity to come and test stuff. So you can ask whoever's in charge of your event if you can come in early and just click on things and see. A lot of times, you can. Hopefully, you can.

But either way, I would encourage you to go look at the room if you can get inside, walk up on those steps. As Rick mentioned, sometimes there's things taped down, cords. Sometimes there's a confidence monitor. I don't know how the setup is going to be. But try to familiarize yourself with that stage so you're not walking up there for the first time during your event.

And he had mentioned coinstructor or somebody. If you need that five-minute warning, they can come in early and sit in the front. And then I think the best tip on the microphones is—so there's many different kinds. If you're a walker, you might want that lapel mic. It just needs to be—hopefully, they help you put it on. But it needs to be in the right spot to catch your voice.

If you're using a handheld or the mic on the podium, if you turn to look away at your slides, please note nobody can hear you. And I think it seems like very obvious, but a lot of speakers do. That they don't notice that they're looking away. Julia has a comment. So I'll go ahead, and—

JULIA ROTONDO: Yeah, Margie, you were giving some great tips. I just wanted to specify some information for everybody here specific to the event next week. So you had mentioned a best practice was time cards. I wanted to let everybody know for the technical program, there should be a set of time cards that have a 10-minute warning, a five-minute warning.

Traditionally, the technical planning team lead has those and sits in the front and tries to give everybody warning. So you don't have to hire a coordinator for your Energy Exchange technical presentation. There should be someone who does that. And then for everyone's awareness, there will be a podium microphone. And I believe the plan is to have some additional handhelds on the table.

So I will, I guess, echo Margie's warning. I've been in many Energy Exchange sessions. And I've also committed this sin myself, where you're like, I'm in front of the mic. I'll just turn my head to look at the screen on my right. And no one can hear you. So—

MARGIE SPLATTSTOESSER: Will there be a confidence monitor? Will the slides also be on the podium?

JULIA ROTONDO: The slides—there'll be a podium that has a laptop. And there's no monitor.

MARGIE SPLATTSTOESSER: Perfect, perfect, perfect. That's good. So at least you're able to look forward. So that's good. I like the setup. All right, Rick, I'll turn it back over to you.

RICK REDDEN: OK, thank you, Margie. And thank you also, Julie. I appreciate all that for all of our participants here. Just a gentle reminder in terms of engagement and some of those things we just mentioned, if you're fortunate enough, depending on the energy training there, have an event coordinator. Or know who the key people are to assist you. Be aware, as Margie was alluding to, in regards to the microphones because a lot of times, they're very sensitive.

Margie mentioned a lapel mic. If you do use those because of the setting and they do amplify the sound, let's say, they may be partial to hearing anything on your chest or anything that brushes up against you, meaning a job aid, a prop, something you're demonstrating. So just be aware of that. But also be aware of crosstalk.

So if you're not actually in the training or maybe you've run an activity or an exercise in a different training environment, make sure you turn your mic off. And then turn it back on, especially when you need to give out reminders during the activity or exercise.

And then the last two things here are very, very important to us—and we really stress them—shared visibility. And if you are in a training session where you are recording or have an in-room camera, just be cognizant of that. And then do everything you can, as I mentioned, to be friendly. Connect with them. Thank them, those kind of things. And hopefully, Margie and I have been trying to demonstrate a little of that here so far today, very important in engagement.

Next, we'd like to look at communication skills and why those are important for you. So we looked at some of those activities and exercises and obviously the learning styles prior to that. But we want you to think about the verbal and the nonverbal. So think about that.

As you can see on the picture here at the Energy Exchange, if you're up in front of a large audience, it's important for them to understand you, so how you say things, what you say, and then obviously what they see, especially if you're referencing visual aids or a presentation up on a screen. So those are very, very important. And we're going to look at all three of these here in the next couple slides.

So we can look at emphasis in terms of appropriate training language, so what you say. Select vocabulary with care that's applicable to the training, the goal and objective and anything that you're trying to describe or promote, especially if it's a skilled task, using a piece of equipment or device or demonstrating an actual skill. And employ vivid and colorful language as appropriate, depending on the setting and depending on what needs to be said.

Use spoken rather than written language. This is very important to us in the training we do, might be applicable to you but something to consider. This is really important when you're doing task performance training. Think of a job skill or something they need to actually do in their job.

So what you say and using appropriate language and how you say it, the force, the pitch of your voice projection, your speaking rate and timing. Pause is a great effect. As you can see, I tried to demonstrate to you there but making sure your voice projects. For example, if you don't have great speaker capability in terms of your voice projection on a microphone of some sort, making sure you're talking loud enough that you can visually see that you're talking over the last person in the room so you know that they're hearing you in the back of the room if the sound isn't very good.

And your clarity of speaking—so using verbal cues and appropriate speaking language for that training session. What you say, how you say it and then, lastly, what they see, very important when you're in front of a classroom. If Julia were to ask me a question and I don't agree with it, I don't want to sigh and show a verbal disapproval, or I don't agree with you, or you're not right. That's a wrong answer, different ways to project that.

Not that you have to appear stoic, but whatever that environment is that Julia is responding to a question maybe, that's really important. Those facial expressions that you project, your eye contact, your body movement, and your gestures—we do so much training, as I said both, domestically and internationally. Margie and I live by what's called kiss, bow, and shake hands.

So culturally, when is it appropriate to shake hands, to acknowledge people, to offer up, hey, please give me more information? What are your appropriate gestures or mannerisms? Especially when you're emphasizing a key point or you're trying to show agreement or some type of solidarity or continue on or give me more information, very important with your nonverbal skills because it's really important as a facilitator or a trainer that you indicate intense listening, so what they see.

The third one is listening skills. And why is this important? Well, the frequency of the activity. Think of an interactive exercise or activity where the frequency is really considered about the amount of training that will compare it to, for example. A lot of times, when we do an activity or a training, listening is 40% of it. Think of how much listening you're actually doing in this session with us today or as little speaking.

In an instructor-led environment, it's quite different. In a virtual setting, those numbers are obviously going to be off. But do they actually read information? Whether it's, as I mentioned, on a poster flip chart or a visual overhead or something that you projected up on a screen on a slide.

Writing—do you have them doing something applicable? Like, I was trying to do with you at the finger in the air for the kinesthetic or tactile learner? And now when we look at the amount of training, think of all the training that you and I go through. We don't get trained on how to listen. So the amount of training we go through, most of it's read or write, some or quite often a lot.

Do we ask them to speak? Very little. Does that help the auditory learner? Something to consider. And then the listening, almost none. So a lot of times, in our trainings, using Margie and I example, we touch upon those visual and kinesthetic or tactile learning styles.

So with the auditory learner, what do you hear from your participants? Are they able to provide comment? Are you giving them affirmation on something well done? Think of those things as your participants are receiving training.

So are they hearing what you said? Can you, for example, hear your participants? Do you allot enough time for questions from the participant? Are you careful not to overload them with content? And hopefully, we're not doing that to a large degree today. But that affects retention. And think of a lot of information in a short-time span.

Are your objectives clear? And are you following them? For right now, we're migrating into objective two here in our hour and a half we're spending together today. Are items and information sharp and contrast probably to normal delivery?

So is there noises? Is there references? Is there extra visual aids? We've tried to use a video, for example. I've tried to demonstrate some things on camera. And that's very important when I'm trying to make a reference to a point. Granted a tactile learning style, for example, is it simple and succinct? Have I kept the information fairly short and as applicable as demonstrating something, as I mentioned on camera?

And then have I given cues or directives within the training? Think of each you've run in a controlled exercise or activity in your training environment to you give them time warnings in the activity. Maybe you preface the activity and giving them 10 minutes up front. Do you give them a five-minute, a two-minute, and a 30-second warning before the actual activity time frame is captured and finished before you go to an actual debrief?

So think about these seven things in terms of listening skills and how you can help the participant from the facilitator/trainer perspective. Use information and be a more engaging instructor.

All right, lastly, we're looking at our questioning techniques and engagement—open-ended questions, closed-ended questions and interactive questions, different ways to engage your audience. We do it in various different forms at various different times. Why we use them in training facilitation is very important, especially when we're trying to do knowledge checks or captures or what type of questions we want to use in a certain setting or maybe with a small or large audience, depending on that training.

So open-ended questions—think about how to ask your participants maybe in a small setting for them to reflect on the information that you've just covered so that they could give some type of response to you that is maybe going to stir some deep thinking or additional collaboration. With a closed-ended question, giving you a response to a certain figure, let's say, or a specific answer. Closed-ended questions might be something that they would refer to with a yes or no or a true or false.

But that obviously keeps control of a situation when you're engaging the participant with you, the instructor or facilitator. An interactive question—overhead, direct, or relay—generally used to interact with the engaged participant. Overhead question to them, anybody can answer a direct question, Julia over here on the left side.

Or if you're in a group setting, group three, can you please provide us a response to this question? OK, thank you for your answer group three. I'm going to relay that question to group six over here on the left. Can you give us a response or reflect upon their answer? Different ways to use engagement with questioning techniques, which is really important.

Next, we're going to look at tools. But before we get to that, we want to find out what type of questions you would use in a certain environment. No, go ahead, Margie. Thank you. You want to gauge how the audience is feeling. Would you use an open-ended question or a closed-ended question?

All right, looks like most of you have answered open-ended question. I know we have some responses still coming in. All righty, great. Majority of them have answered open-ended questions. How about our next one, Margie? There are two minutes left remaining in the training session. Do you want to use a closed-ended or an interactive question?

When you have some time constraints, you want to use a closed-ended question. Good. It looks like nearly everybody has answered that. So think of time constraints. What type of question you'd like to ask? OK, how about our next one, Margie? You want to engage multiple groups in the audience. Would you use a closed-ended question or an interactive question?

Great. It looks like everyone's answering the interactive question. Super yes. So if you want to engage everybody in your audience or if you broke them into small groups, and you're summarizing maybe an activity, you want to ask interactive questions. Great. Great look at how you could use questioning techniques for engagement.

So next, we want to look at tools. And I mentioned earlier that, Chris, you had a great question. I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Margie. But first, I want to look at the first visual you see here, flip charts, a great tool to use especially after you've captured the information, allowed for maybe collaboration or brainstorming.

You could take it off the flip chart. Use it on the wall. And I think we've all probably done that in our training or educational paths. So Margie, I'll turn the next one over to you.

MARGIE SPLATTSTOESSER: Yeah, so IdeaFlip is what we use during our virtual events to essentially take over the flip chart. I think it's super easy for the user, for the person building it, a little bit of a learning. You have to learn a little bit about it. But eventually, you figure it out.

It's anonymous. It's pretty simple. Same with Menti. They click on a link, and they can go and put in all their thoughts. You can export it. So it's actually a really nice option for virtual events or even if you had a lot of people in a room.

RICK REDDEN: Great, Margie. I know you may never use some of these engagement tools. But in your FEMP training delivery, we thought we'd share some of these for actual training engagement and Margie's got a couple more here.

MARGIE SPLATTSTOESSER: I saw that several of you have used Mural. We use Mural a lot for tabletop exercises, even if we're in a classroom. If you have a large number of people and you can't all gather around a map, we have displayed the Mural on the board and had an individual come up. Where would you need to place a security officer here at this facility? Where would you need signage? That kind of thing. So that is one of the uses for Mural and this tabletop. Oh, Rick, clicked for me.

So Mentimeter, we've been using today. And then he uses Slido with some of the agencies he works with. I have yet to use that, but it looks like it's another polling. And I did see multiple polling, other options in the chat. There seems to be no shortage of these.

And Mentimeter does have a lot of cool features. You can do gamification. You can actually see who's logged in. One of my favorite new slide options is that you can have everybody say like, what topic do you want to learn about? And then everyone can vote on their favorites from what they had input.

We always like to ask questions at the end. How did we do? What can we do better? SurveyMonkey, I saw a lot of people had used that. And then Microsoft Forms, I believe it comes with Microsoft Office. And it also has a nice way to show you the data, to analyze it. It's got different charts and options for you to view. And you can customize it to match your formats.

There's just a ton of these on the market. And I think you want to look at what you're trying to accomplish and which tool fits that the most or the best. I will say I've worked with instructors who want to do something. And sometimes there isn't actual value of using the tool.

So make sure that you are getting something out of it and not just using it to use the tools. I've seen people use tools the entire time and ended up just taking a lot of time and not really benefiting the course. Julie has her hand up.

JULIA ROTONDO: Yeah, I just wanted to add on to this point about engagement. So I think you made a great point about understanding the value. For everyone's awareness, for Energy Exchange technical sessions, there's feedback collected in the app on the training session as well as in the Whole Building Design Guide when people get their CEUs. So there's already going to be some information collected for you all on the technical sessions.

For your FEMP pre-event workshops, again, when people take those quiz questions to earn their CEUs, there will be information collected. So this SurveyMonkey or Form would really be anything above and beyond that you all wanted to get collected. And so that's, I think, Margie's point about really making sure you know what you're getting out of this. Don't go to the trouble of recreating the wheel if what you really need is just, did we do a good job?

MARGIE SPLATTSTOESSER: Yep, exactly. I think that's all the tools, Rick, if you want to continue.

RICK REDDEN: Great. Yeah, thank you for your point there, Julia. Great point. Thank you, Margie. So looking at the training setting and you managing that as a facilitator or instructor, we strongly encourage you to always be present.

That means in tune with every moment of the training engagement, always paying close attention to the training and the environment which with the training is occurring, having a pulse on everything that's occurring in the session, and you showing that smile and enthusiasm about the topic and the actual training for that session or that day, and then making it engaging, interesting, appealing, and pleasing to your participant. We always strongly to consider this at all times in your training delivery.

So how else do you handle training delivery? We look at a lot of things with our trainers here at PNNL. In terms of potential, as you can see, disruptive behaviors, so having a plan for the know-it-alls, the talkers, the nonparticipants, the arguers, or the ramblers.

Let me give you a couple examples of two of the five there on the left of the screen. As you can see, the talker, how do you handle the talker in your training environment, somebody that might be disrupting the actual training? Should you reassign them within the audience on a break, move them? Or on that break, ask them that we're going to have someone else answer questions or provide input. Ask them to provide additional information without embarrassing them. There's different ways to do this.

Calling on others near them—so they have an opportunity to answer a question or participate. The nonparticipant—for example, find alternative ways to include them. One of the things I do with the nonparticipant, especially if I have one or more even, is I ask them to be the spokesperson in a group breakout activity.

So if I have a nonparticipant—and Julie's a nonparticipant in our training here, and she's over here with group four. I assign her to be the spokesperson to debrief their activity, for example, different ways you can handle disruptions. I know the arguers and ramblers are on there. You may have some different techniques. Just be cognizant of how you're going to handle those disruptions within your training delivery.

But that gets back to the point of knowing your audience. So knowing the purpose of the training and how you handle things in terms of the context and customizing your presentation, especially when you have open communication, dialogue, and collaboration so they get the understanding of the real content of the training and why you should help the perception of the training topic, it'll help you make that more impactful and the learning easier, better for the participant.

As you can see, using different tools here, we've always tried to work to keep our participants interested in the topic or the subject matter for the actual training. So a short video here for you to think about some of those things we've been discussing in terms of verbal, nonverbal, also the training setting and knowing your audience. Remember, back to the communication skills, what you say, how you say it, and what they see, think about those things as you watch this video.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

[CHATTER]

- Quadruple checking notes as people file in, getting the computer ready, and asking everyone to take a seat. Pretending to click something on the computer to cover up the fact that I don't know what to do with myself.

- Arriving just in time.

- Wrapping up our conversation about a popular TV show we watched last night.

- Disdain for popular TV show.

- Mediocre icebreaker joke, that doesn't quite land. Attempt to redeem myself by making fun of that guy.

[LAUGHTER]

- Laughing at that guy.

- Laughing because he's laughing, and I like him.

- Not laughing, and now checking out for the rest of the session.

- Title, dramatic pause, of my presentation.

- Question about how long this session will last.

- Annoyed, vague response.

- Exaggerated eye roll.

- Poignant quote from unknown philosopher to kick off presentation in dramatic fashion. Juvenile slide transition to spice things up. Reading along paragraph exactly as it appears on the PowerPoint slide about a shocking statistic I just learned about followed by all kinds of vague lingo that no one will remember two seconds from now, capped off by three bullet points. Proudly paused to make sure everyone notices my awesome clip art choice. Out-of-date pop culture reference.

- Correction about pop culture reference.

- Defending pop culture reference by citing social networking site no one uses.

- Audible sigh to make sure everyone knows this is a complete waste of my time.

- Serious and somewhat over-the-top reminder about how important this information is.

[LAUGHTER]

Unexpected technical difficulty. Embarrassed, people can see my desktop background.

- Snide remark about how Macs are better than PCs.

- Desperate plea for IT guy.

- Fixing the problem with an annoyed look on my face so that everyone knows how good at computers I am.

- Unfunny video I'm really proud of having created myself.

- Texting my friend in a way that I think is just great.

- Clearly aware of the texting. Prefacing a preface of a preface so that no one really understands the point that I'm prefacing. And now going through a long list of facts one by one by one, asking if anyone has any questions. Reminding everyone there are no bad questions.

Hoping if I wait long enough, someone will finally have a question. Concluding by restating the title of my presentation and dismissing everyone. Excited that someone came back for a follow-up conversation.

- Grabbing pin that I accidentally left.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[END PLAYBACK]

RICK REDDEN: So in that video, we looked at verbal and nonverbal communication skills but also the training setting and knowing your audience. So remember, we were reflecting back about what you say, how you say it, and, obviously, what they see. Simple little video, and I know some of the examples might be a little bit towards the absurd side. But you can see the relevance in the actual training setting, regardless of how big your audience is.

So some things to think about in terms of tips as you prepare your material—we ask our trainers here, for example, to use a mirror to practice your presentation. Even video yourself, whether it's with a camera or your actual phone. And use that to check your gestures and mannerisms. And use it also as a timing mechanism.

And again, Chris, I'm going to answer your question here in just a second on the next slide. But in the presentation environment, use the questioning that will be used in the equipment that you're going to use to actually do that. So Margie and I testing, for example, Mentimeter or the videos that we have embedded all the way down, as we mentioned earlier, the clicker and the lapel, mike, handheld, whatever that may be. So practice.

What you're seeing on the screen here is an actual chart that I'm holding up here on camera. And that's a time mark mechanism, with the slide in the title in the far two left columns and then your time mechanisms on the two columns to the far right. You can see, for example—this is from another course that Margie and I do—we've color-coded our activities and breaks.

And I'm also holding up on the screen an actual clock app, just some things for tips that you can use that might be helpful or beneficial to you. But remember, when you get up there at the Energy Exchange, don't just wing it. Any of the trainings that we do here are planned and precisely laid out so we can try to hit some time marks and use some of the tools that my colleague Margie is going to describe next.

MARGIE SPLATTSTOESSER: Thanks, Rick. So I'm not sure that a logistical agenda, which is the document you're looking at, is something that you would use at your conference. But thinking about your regular trainings, it might actually be really helpful. So again, I call this a logistical agenda. It's been referred to as a run of show, a producer script. But it's basically a detailed guide that we rely on for our events, and we use them for virtual or in-person events.

So we start with the basic agenda, and then we build around it. What are the things we need to make sure that we do before the students arrive? We always retest our videos, making sure the sound level is right. Does the Wi-Fi in the room work? Prepare any props, basically whatever you need to do before they arrive.

When you're creating this, you're going to look session by session. Do I have a presentation? Do we have handouts, activities? What do we need for this? And sometimes you're going to find, oh, I actually need another person for this. So that's when you discover, I can't do two things at once. I need another person.

You can see at 10:45 here, I said check on missing country presentations. I was collecting all these. The one in teal was the one I didn't get. A lot of people will bring me presentations at the last second. So with so many details that we're tracking, I need to be able to look for those things that are missing.

We use color coding here as well. Green is my equipment, where I'm moving tables and chairs at 9:30 as soon as we're done. Yellow is anything that has material or an action item on my part. We also number the sessions. I think I mentioned earlier I'm not technical. A lot of times, the names of the session, the presentation, it's not saved exactly the same, the file name, and so I can't really tell them apart.

So we've started numbering them. And it makes it really helpful to make sure we're putting the right one up. And if you did need to change something, because we're constantly changing if a speaker was sick, or we had to move something around, we can easily see, OK, this session takes 30 minutes. And here's the materials, and we can move it a lot easier.

What you're looking at is for an entire day with multiple speakers. This version is for a virtual event we did where we had a lot of activities in one presentation. We had different time zones. We had one for the students and one for us. So we noted that. We broke it down by slide. All breakout groups were preassigned, anything we were dropping in chat, which is the yellow highlight.

I didn't want to put that entire table in. Otherwise, you scroll down and scroll over. So we really try to practice the whole thing. And we make adjustments to make it easier. I learned with Rick I have to note page numbers because he likes to point out, Students, in your book, please look at page 14 or 13. But it's actually a different page for their book.

So anything that we need to have on here, anything that we might forget, we note this. We try to be as prepared as possible for what we know because we do know there's going to be some things that happen that we're not prepared for. And so if we're prepared for what we know, it just puts us in a better position to flex, which we have to do daily, seems like. So that is our major tool we use during the event execution. On to you, Rick.

RICK REDDEN: Thanks, Margie. So as you can see that we've showed you in the last three slides, Margie and I use a lot of mechanisms or tools in order to manage our effort, let's say. So we've planned it. We've organized it all, the way to that example I was showing you on the screen that, Chris, maybe you can use with your actual slide number and slide title and what you're doing at a high level on that given slide and whether, for example, you have an interactive activity, even in an instructor-led environment or virtually.

So you've got that cued up, and you know where you need to be. So at slide 17, you know you need to be at this juncture of your presentation. Or after slide 17, on slide 18, we may be going to a 10-minute break. Whatever that may be, you've got that marked. And you have it in an instructor spreadsheet.

Or in the classic example that my colleague Margie used from an event coordination production standpoint, we have it in a logistical agenda, especially if you're using activities or exercises and you're going out to breakout groups, so much important when Margie referenced those page numbers, for example. And as you can see here on the slide, having what we call an IG and a PG, an Instructor Guide, which is like a lesson plan, or a PG, a Participant Guide, which will be most likely very different and shorter than the instructor guide.

So why do we have an instructor guide along with the instructor spreadsheet, the logistical agenda? It helps our engagement. It provides roadmap for us and summarizes the key points that we want to hit. We elevate our training, meaning we're never going to touch the ceiling. But we've made it rise to a level that is presentable, hopefully collaborative, and certainly hopefully engaging.

And it improves our outcomes. It improves participant time maybe in an activity or a response on a certain task, especially if they're filling out a checklist maybe or doing something in a predescribed or defined order. Using tools for interaction or performance, like I mentioned, a performance checklist or different techniques to better assist the process of the actual training delivery.

So organizing and planning is very important when you're talking about props and equipment to meet the objectives, to make sure those props and equipment are used wisely and are functional and safe, and that you have task-specific and leadership roles within the exercise and activities. And I can't emphasize that enough. Assigning roles in the active learning process helps with group dynamics for specific task achievement, to meet a goal, for example, or at least the objective of the training and also assigning roles to provide leadership.

I gave you that example using Julia here in our setting as the nonparticipant, assigning her to be the group spokesperson, so giving leadership where needed and as needed. Managing the activity is very important, providing guidance. So for example, in that 10-minute activity, OK, you have one minute remaining before we go to the final time closure and do what we call a hot wash or a true debrief of that activity.

So knowing what we just looked through in terms of all those learning styles, planning, organization, and exercises and equipment used within the activity and some of those communication skills, especially for what you say, how you say it, and what they see, very important for interaction and using everything that you planned and organize out to optimally achieve the goal and objective of the training. What we're going to next is a little bit of closure. So I'm going to turn it over to Margie.

MARGIE SPLATTSTOESSER: So on the screen, you'll see a QR code for the SurveyMonkey. I'm also going to drop the link in chat. We just have, I believe, four questions, should just take a couple minutes. We would love to have your feedback.

We are always looking to improve. I know that we gave you a lot of information in the very short period of time. But we wanted to make sure that we could touch on several topics. But we are very open to feedback, so appreciate your time.

CEDAR BLAZEK: Rick, Margie, if I can just jump in for a moment, too, before everyone drops off. Thank you all, everyone. This is Cedar. I appreciate you joining, sitting in for this. Hopefully, you've learned some tips and tricks and some things to keep in mind for either the pre-event workshops or for Energy Exchange as well as any of your upcoming trainings, in person or virtual.

I'm going to be working with Rick and Margie and this PNNL team. One, we're going to be able to share this recording out, so you'll have access to this. But a lot of these tips, best practices, tools, foundational research around adult learning, I am hoping to add to our FEMP training site.

We're reviewing that now. But we're hoping to have a lot more information on there. So if you want to get deeper into some of this stuff, you'll be able to. But I wanted to say thanks to the team for taking the time today ahead of our big upcoming training event in March.

RICK REDDEN: Thank you, Cedar. I appreciate it. I just have some final tips on the screen while you're completing the evaluation there. And we can dive deeper into any of this stuff. And Margie and I are more than happy to stay online after we close it out. And as Cedar mentioned, we can dive deeper into certain things that maybe you have a question about or may be beneficial to any training that you're providing here in the very near future.

But just some final tips. And I'd like to thank our great colleague Julia for prompting us on this in terms of making sure your images, whatever you're using, whether it's on a PowerPoint, a visual aid, a prop of some sort, are easily read, getting familiar with the room and equipment. And I rely on my trusted colleague Margie to do that.

Making sure you never show the back of your head to your audience. Never talk away from them or any other type of verbiage, if you will, you can put to that. So you're always allowing them to see your face. Remember that instructor visibility, that shared visibility within the training session, making sure you have that. If you're at Energy Exchange, using your AV people or anybody help organizing the event, especially where the need of sound or the use of videos needs to be amplified.

And lastly—and I hope I tried to demonstrate that a little bit with Chris maybe in deferring maybe an answer to his question. But also, repeat the question so everybody can hear it. I know you've been in many trainings like myself where somebody asks a question. And you don't know what the facilitator or trainer is responding to. You don't even know what was asked and what the responding for. So as an instructor/facilitator, repeat the question so everybody can hear it, even if you're miked up. And the audience member, the participant asking the question probably isn't.

And then lastly, as Julia greatly points out to, practice everything. Don't wing it. Have a plan. Be organized. Be ready to use any applicable tool for engagement you have. But plan, prepare, and perform.

During our session, we discussed the adult learner learning styles, the setting of your actual training, and how that can help you with training engagement. We tried to describe for you communication and performance skills and how you can use, for example, different types of questions in training delivery. Remember, the open-ended, the closed-ended, the interactive, the direct, the relay, those kind of things.

But we also tried to define the importance of using various tools and managed those applications so you have great training delivery. Having a plan, being organized, much like all those tools that my colleague Margie was demonstrating. Lastly, I'd like to thank Cedar and Julia and other management here at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Kevin McIntyre, but also my great colleague Margie for helping us with this training delivery. I hope you got something out of it.

But especially, wherever you're at here in the United States and wherever time zone you're in, we thank you for your time and spending this morning or this afternoon with us. Again, Cedar, Julia, thank you so much. I'll turn it over to you.

JULIA ROTONDO: I am going to stop recording.

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